Obama Still Talking Public Option

While many, including many in the "progressive" blogosphere and in the Progressive Caucus (look at the Progressive Caucus members who did not pledge to vote for a robust public option), are throwing in the towel on the public option, via Crooks and Liars, the President is still talking public option:

President Obama: I think one of the options should be a public insurance option. (Loud cheers) [. . .] I have said I'm open to different ideas on how to set this up we're going to set this up but I'm not going to back down on the basic principle that if Americans can't find affordable coverage we're going to provide you a choice.

It is clear that those giving up on the public option are giving up on President Obama. Or were against the public option the whole time. Those who want to help President Obama on health care reform should do so by standing firm on the public option. Those advocating capitulation on the public option are working against President Obama.

...to avoid having to say what FDR did: "I welcome their hatred." And then to act accordingly. I think he has a terrible personality flaw for a president -- like an athlete or team that cannot summon the "killer" instinct to put your opponent away when you have the chance.

But a tepid president is a tepid presdident. I can't help but react to it. With all due respect, you can make presidential lemons into lemonade, and you might be able to hear, but you gotta make it rain A LITTLE to bring some water into the pitcher. He's bringing very little when it MATTERS.

Obama said that he thought one of the options should be a public option.

Had he passionately stumped for a full blown public option (not 5%) from the beginning he could have sold it to the American people. The Dem politicians would have fallen in line especially if Obama said he could not reign in the advocacy groups that support real reform.

"I have said I'm open to different ideas on how we're going to set up [a public option] but I'm not going to back down on the basic principle that if Americans can't find affordable coverage we're going to provide you a choice." (Obama in Minnesota, 9-10-09)

While sounding tough ("I'm not going to back down"), he positioned the public option within an array of "different ideas" and took no firm stand, instead placing highest value on "basic principle" of "choice" -- an appealing tactic of salesmanship that allows the customer to believe he or she is making the decision. If Americans can't find affordable coverage, that would likely mean there would be no public option or even co-op plan (no evidence if co-ops will work anyway), leaving a choice of what? Medicaid available only to the lowest income levels state by state? That's a choice Americans have already. It's our safety net for the poor. What about the income level between Medicaid and the lower middle class? No comment from the president. And what about government financial resources intended for the public good like education, the environment, energy etc stripped to subsidize private insurance premiums without getting back a share of the mandate windfall to help cover the low income margins. He didn't mention this, either. And what will control insurance premium rate increases without a public option? (Or a co-op). No comment. I can't believe he got through a 60 Minutes interview tonight without being asked this question -- and of course he didn't volunteer an answer.

Thanks a lot, Mr. President.

He has a fabulous smile. He's seems like a nice guy. He's a corporate guy. It's taken me months to figure out his modus operandi. At first, especially because of his calling to end the Iraq war and various things he said during the primaries, I assumed he might be progressive, but when I saw how he folded on FISA, sided with coal companies, and after the mortgage crash appointed the same financial idiots who allowed us to get into serious economic trouble in the first place (Geithner and Summers), I began to wonder what was going on. Now, with this HCR bill set up on a forced-buy system of commercial insurance (with a public option "to keep insurers honest" hanging by its fingernails -- meant to be the compromise for single-payer, ha! some compromise, likely to be lost in the final bill), and watching Obama let himself be sucker-played for a "bipartisan" solution (or doing it on purpose as a way to signal his corporate, non-political intentions), I began to see that he had formulated himself as a broad-based demographic political salesman, not a Democrat or a moderate, not partisan at all or a fighter. Salesmen don't fight They don't go out on limbs. They take few risks. They keep the doors wide open on both sides to let in as many customers as possible. He has been acting as a corporate lobbyist for the insurance companies in a very unusual and skillful way.

To be fair, most of his Dem colleagues (and Republicans) are acting in the same manner, making us less a democracy and more a demography.

as in "I think" and what a bill "should" have -- they tell it all, especially from a guy whose teleprompter has had strong action verbs in past . . . in the last campaign, at least when he was talking about primary opponents. Clearly, in his current campaign -- for re-election -- he is going to be a different guy. I'm not sure that it's a winning posture, if such caution fails to encourage all those first-time voters to come back to the polls.

And if he thinks that this will win Repub voters, he's just wrong. They are the reason for the recalcitrance of their Repubs in Congress.

Your intention on posting this, but even in that quote he's slipped in his escape hatch.

President Obama: but I'm not going to back down on the basic principle that if Americans can't find affordable coverage we're going to provide you a choice.

Using the fancy trick of mentioning things together, but not actually wedding them to one another. He's open to whatever acomplishes his "basic principle".

I think it's clear by now his speech wasnt only to boost his numbers, but to shift the death of the public option over to congress. Give a decent defense of it, stand by it in subsequent speeches saying what supporters want to hear, while signaling to those in DC that you dont care if it dies, just give you some "basic principle" to spin as reform.

being in charge means taking responsibility for others sometimes. I hope President Obama gets that basic principle. The failure of Congress to provide comprehensive health care reform will be laid at his feet and he will be judged for it in 2012.

It's all the more reason he should be using the bully pulpit at every opportunity to widen majority opinion for a public option.

We already have majority opinion on the public option. Somewhere like 60-70%. The only thing to save it now (imo) will be a reigning in of the bluedogs, which he will not do. How much does it matter ultimately if after every defense of it he points out that it isnt needed?